Email Archiving

This category includes the latest news on email archiving solutions, new legislation relating to the storage of email and tips and advice on implementing and maintaining email archives.

Email archiving is a method of preserving emails and storing messages securely. An email archive allows employees to keep their inboxes and email account folders clear. Archives can be stored locally or on an email server, although many organizations use a cloud-based service for archiving old messages. A cloud-based archive means less storage space is required on already overburdened mail servers.

In contrast to backups, email archives are searchable, allowing messages to be quickly retrieved when needed. Not only does this allow accidentally deleted messages to be quickly found and restored, it means messages can be easily located in the event of a compliance audit, legal discovery or freedom of information request.

Federal and state laws require organizations to keep all email correspondence for several years. For many medium to large enterprises, that means hundreds of millions of emails need to be stored. Securely storing those emails in the cloud reduces hardware requirements, slashing the costs of email storage.

An effective email archiving solution is also a necessity for businesses who collect, use, share or store the personal data of EU citizens due to the enactment of the EU´s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). An effective email archiving solution helps businesses comply with the requirements for the security of access control, auditing and encryption. It can also facilitate quick and effortless responses to data access and erasure requests.

In addition to storing messages, archives can store email attachments, calendars, pst files, contacts, notes and instant messages, which can all be recalled and accessed quickly and easily via search UI.

An email archiving solution is now a requirement in business to ensure that emails are not lost, storage space is kept to a minimum, and emails can be retrieved on demand. While native Microsoft Exchange Email Archiving is available, many businesses will find the archiving options come up short. The alternative is to use a third-party email archiving solution. Not only will this provide all the features required by businesses, it will improve efficiency and will save on cost. To meet the requirements of businesses and improve efficiency, TitanHQ developed ArcTitan: A secure, fast, cloud-based email archiving solution.

What is Email Archiving and Why is it Important?

Federal, state, and industry regulations require businesses to retain emails for many years. Storing emails can take up a considerable amount of storage space, especially considering the volume of emails that are typically sent and received on a daily basis by employees. While businesses can get away with storing emails in backups to meet legal requirements, backups are not searchable. If emails need to be recovered, they need to be recovered quickly. That is simply not possible with backups as they are not searchable. The solution is an email archive. In contrast to backups, email archives are searchable, and messages can be retrieved on-demand quickly and with minimal effort.

Email Archiving is Essential for eDiscovery and GDPR Compliance

The importance of an email archiving solutions for eDiscovery cannot be underestimated. There have been many cases where businesses have received heavy fines for the failure to produce emails as part of the eDiscovery process. For instance, in the Zubulake v. USB Warburg case, the plaintiff was awarded $29 million as a result of the failure to produce emails. In Coleman Holdings v. Morgan Stanley, eDiscovery failures resulted in a fine of $15 million.

Email archives are now essential for GDPR compliance. Sine the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation came into effect on May 25, 2018, companies have been required to produce – and delete – on request every element of an individual’s personal data, including personal data contained in emails. Without an email archive, this can be incredibly time consuming and may result in data being unlawfully retained since backups are not searchable. The fines for GDPR compliance failures can be as high as €20 million or 4% of global annual revenue, whichever is greater.

Native Microsoft Exchange Email Archiving

Native Microsoft exchange email archiving provides businesses with journaling and personal archive functions, but each has its drawbacks. The functions meet some business requirements, such as freeing up space in mailboxes, but they lack the full functions of a dedicated archive and do not meet all eDiscovery requirements.

Wirth native Microsoft Exchange email archiving, end users have far too much control over the information that is loaded into an archive and they can delete emails unless a legal hold is activated. For admins, the control panel is difficult to use and retrieving emails can be complicated and time consuming.

Native Microsoft Exchange email archiving functions fail to meet the needs of many businesses, especially those in highly regulated industries. While the native Microsoft Exchange email archiving functions have improved over the years, there are limitations with most product versions and archiving can be complex with certain email architectures.

Any business that uses multiple email systems alongside Microsoft Exchange will require a third-party email archiving solution. Microsoft Exchange does not support the archiving of email from other platforms.

Email archiving has improved with Office 365. SMBs that use Office 365 have email archiving functionality included in their plans, but it is only free of charge with E3-E5 plans. Other plans charge around $3 per user, which is more expensive than custom-built archiving solutions such as ArcTitan.

Native Microsoft Exchange email archiving is an option for businesses, but Microsoft Exchange was not developed for email archiving. A third-party solution for email archiving on Microsoft Exchange is still a requirement, despite the improvements that have been made by Microsoft.

A third-party email archiving solution will save your IT department a considerable amount of time trying to locate old messages, especially for the typical requests that are received which are light on detail. The advanced search options in ArcTitan make search and retrieval of messages much faster and easier.

Feature-Rich, Lightning Fast Email Archiving with ArcTitan

ArcTitan has been developed specifically for email archiving and email archiving alone. ArcTitan has been designed to meet all archiving needs of businesses and allow managed service providers to offer email archiving to their clients.

The benefits of ArcTitan include lighting fast email archiving and message retrieval, secure encrypted storage, and compliance with industry regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, SEC, FINRA, and GDPR. ArcTitan ensures businesses meet eDiscovery requirements without having to pay for additional eDiscovery services from Microsoft.

With ArcTitan, an accurate audit trail is maintained, and businesses have near instant access to all company emails. ArcTitan serves as a black box recorder for all email to meet all eDiscovery requirements and ensures compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations.

ArcTitan Features

ArcTitan requires no hardware or software, is quick and easy to install, and easily slots in to the email architecture of businesses. The solution is highly scalable (there are no limits on storage space or users), it is lightning fast, easy to use, and stores all emails safely and securely.

Businesses that have yet to implement a Microsoft Exchange email archiving solution typically save up to 75% storage space and costs are kept to a minimum with a flexible pay as you go pricing policy, with subscriptions paid per live user.

If you have yet to implement an email archiving solution, if you are unhappy with the native Microsoft Exchange email archiving features, or find your current archiving solution expensive or difficult to use, get in touch with TitanHQ today to find out more about the benefits of ArcTitan and the improvements it can make to your business.

Reselling Office 365 doesn’t offer much in the way of profit for MSPs, although there are benefits for MSPs that come from offering Office 365 and it is possible to make Office 365 more profitable.

Before explaining where the margin is for MSPs in Office 365, let’s first take a look at the benefits for MSPs from offering Office 365.

Benefits for MSPs from Offering Office 365 to Clients

SMBs are increasingly moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud and Office 365 is one of the most popular cloud services. Office 365 now has more than 135 million commercial monthly users and that number is growing rapidly.

MSPs may not be able to make much from Office 365 alone, but by providing Office 365 MSPs can win more business and gain a competitive advantage. There is no outlay involved with offering Office 365 to clients, the product is great and meets clients’ needs, and money can be made from handling Office 365 migrations.

MSPs can also benefit from migrating existing clients from Exchange or SBS Exchange to Office 365. Office 365 is far easier to manage so they stand to save a great deal of time on troubleshooting and maintenance, which can be a major headache with Exchange.

By offering Office 365 you can win more business, reduce operational costs, and stay competitive. However, the best way to make money from Office 365 is through add-on services.

How MSPs Can Make Office 365 More Profitable

The margins for MSPs on Office 365 are rather thin to say the least. Many MSPs find that offering Office 365 on its own doesn’t provide any profit at all. Charging extra per license to improve profitability is an option, but clients could just go direct to avoid the extra cost.

The margins may be small, but managing Office 365 does not require a great deal of effort. You may only make around 50c or $1 per user but sign up enough clients and you could get a reasonable return. There is an opportunity for profit at scale; however, to make a decent return you need to sell services around Office 365.

One of the best ways to make Office 365 more profitable is by offering additional security services. Security is an area where Office 365 can be significantly improved, especially spam filtering. Microsoft has incorporated a spam filter and anti-phishing protections into Office 365, but they fall short of the protection offered by a dedicated third-party spam filter.

Phishing is the number one security threat faced by businesses and Office 365 anti-phishing protections leave a lot to be desired. By offering enhanced spam and phishing protection through a third-party spam filter, not only can MSPs make a decent margin on the add-on solution, by blocking phishing attacks and malware at source, a considerable amount of time can be saved on support.

There are plenty of other opportunities for selling third-party solutions to make up for the lack of options in Office 365. Email archiving is an easy sell and a quick win for MSPs. An email archive is important for compliance and security, saves on storage space, and improves efficiency, and gives clients access to emails from any location.

Spam filtering, email archiving, web filtering, and encryption can be bundled together as an enhanced security package, with each element providing a decent return for MSPs. Given the cost of mitigating a data breach, by preventing breaches, an enhanced security offering will pay for itself. Consequently, Office 365 security should be an easy sell.

Office 365 MSP Add-ons from TitanHQ

For more than 20 years TitanHQ has been developing innovative security solutions for businesses. Today, more than 7,500 businesses are protected by TitanHQ security solutions and more than 2,000 MSPs have signed up to the TitanHQ MSP Alliance Program.

All TitanHQ solutions have been developed from the ground to meet the needs of the SMB marketplace and MSPs. TitanHQ’s spam filtering solution – SpamTitan, email archiving solution – ArcTitan, and web filtering solution – WebTitan, save MSPs support and engineering time, have great margins, and can be easily integrated into MSPs security stacks to make Office 365 more profitable.

To find out more about TitanHQ’s MSP offerings, for details of pricing and MSP margins, contact the TitanHQ MSP Alliance Program team today and take the first step toward making Office 365 more profitable.

Email archiving for MSPs is an often-overlooked service that can add value and improve profits. Email archiving is easy to implement and manage, has a high margin, generates regular additional income, and is an easy sell to clients.

In this post we explore the benefits for clients and MSPs and explain why email archiving for MSPs and their clients is a win-win.

Benefits of Email Archiving for SMBs

Email archiving is now important for organizations of all sizes, from SMBs to the largest enterprises. Huge volumes of emails are sent and received on a daily basis and copies of those emails need to be stored, saved, and often retrieved. Storage of emails in mailboxes poses problems. The storage space required for emails and attachments can be considerable, which means hardware must be purchased and maintained. In terms of security, storing large volumes of emails in mailboxes is never a good idea.

Storing emails in backups is an option, although it is far from ideal. Space is still required and recovering emails when they are needed is a major headache as backup files are not indexed and searching for messages can be extremely time consuming.

An email archive on the other hand is indexed and searchable and emails can be quickly and easily retrieved on demand. If there is a legal dispute or when an organization needs to demonstrate compliance – with GDPR or HIPAA for example – businesses need to be able to recover emails quickly and easily. An email archive also provides a clear chain of custody, which is also required for compliance with many regulations.

Cloud-based archives offer secure storage for emails with no restrictions on storage space. Cloud storage is highly scalable and emails can be easily retrieved from any location.

Benefits of Email Archiving for MSPs

Given the benefits of email archiving it should be an easy sell for MSPs, either as Office 365 archiving-as-a-service as an add-on or incorporated into existing email packages to offer greater value and make your packages stand out from those of your competitors.

As an add-on service, Office 365 archiving-as-a-service will generate regular income for very little effort and will improve the meagre returns from simply offering Office 365 to your clients. As part of a package it can help you to attract more business.

ArcTitan –Email Archiving for MSPs Made Simple

TitanHQ is a leading provider of cloud-based security solutions for MSPs. All TitanHQ products – SpamTitan, WebTitan and ArcTitan SaaS email archiving – have been developed from the group up to specifically meet the needs of MSPs.

ArcTitan has been developed to be easy to implement and manage and it seamlessly integrates into MSPs service stacks, allowing them to provide greater value to clients and make email services much more lucrative offering. On that front, TitanHQ is able to offer generous margins on ArcTitan for MSPs.

ArcTitan Benefits for MSPs

Easy to implement

No hardware required

No software downloads necessary

Highly scalable email archiving

Secure, cloud-based storage with an easy to use centralized management system

Fully rebrandable – ArcTitan can be supplied in white-label form ready for your own branding

World class customer service and support

If you have yet to start offering email archiving to your clients or if you are unhappy with your current provider, contact the TitanHQ MSP team today for full ArcTitan product information, details of pricing, and further information on our MSP Alliance program.

Today is World Backup Day: An annual event that started in 2010 to raise awareness of the importance of backing up data.

Backups are used to recover data in the event of disaster; however, having a backup of data does not necessarily mean data can be recovered. Restoring files from backups is not always effective. Backups can be corrupted and the restoration of files can fail.

While World Backup Day raises awareness of the importance of backing up data, we would like to emphasize the importance of testing backups and reviewing backup strategies to ensure they are effective. Don’t wait until disaster strikes to ensure your strategies are effective and files can be recovered. By then it will be too late.

How Common is Data Loss?

Recent research conducted by Kroll OnTrack has revealed an alarming number of companies have experienced data loss, even when backups of data were performed. Kroll polled 1,000 companies in the United States, Europe, and Australia and discovered that a third of companies had experienced a data loss incident.

Out of those companies, 35% did not have a current backup and experienced data loss as a direct result. Two thirds (67%) of organizations were able to recover the majority of their data from backup files, while 13% said they could recover up to three quarters of their data. Corrupted backup files were cited as the reason for data loss by 12% of companies, but a quarter of companies that lost data said their backup system did not work as it should.

A quarter of companies that backed up their data said they did not test those backups to make sure files could be recovered. A quarter said they tested backups once a week to ensure data were recoverable, and 30% tested their backups on a monthly basis.

Backups are an organization’s insurance against data loss. Just as an insurance policy should not be taken out until the fine print has been read, backups should not be trusted until they have been tested.

The World Backup Day pledge is “I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.” However, to that we add, “I also swear to test my backups to make sure my important documents can be recovered.”

Ransomware – A Major Data Loss Risk for All Businesses

The past 12 months have clearly highlighted the importance of backing up data. Ransomware attacks soared in 2016. Ransomware is a form of malware that locks files with powerful encryption. A ransom demand is then issued to supply the key to unlock the data. Without access to that key, data will remain locked forever if a backup of data does not exisit.

The only way to unlock files is to pay a sizable ransom payment. That payment could be tens of thousands of dollars. In February, last year, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center was forced to pay a ransom of $17,000 to obtain the key to unlock ransomware-encrypted data after it was discovered files could not be recovered from backups.

Ransomware has fast become one of the biggest cybersecurity threats. Research conducted by Kaspersky Lab revealed the number of ransomware variants increased 11-fold between Q1 and Q3, 2016, by which time 32,091 different ransomware variants had been detected. By Q3 2016, a business was being attacked with ransomware every 40 seconds and 42% of small to medium sized businesses had been attacked with ransomware. 32% of businesses were forced to pay the ransom in order to recover their data.

While ransomware attacks have soared, the malicious software is only the third main cause of data loss. Hardware failure poses the biggest risk followed by the loss or theft of devices. Software errors and data loss due to system upgrades round off the top five list.

A Good Data Backup Strategy

Backup systems can be used to continuously backup data, but at the very least a daily backup should be made. Those backups should be tested at least once a week to ensure data can be successfully recovered.

To prevent data loss and maximize the probability of data recovery, organizations should use the 3-2-1 approach. Each organization should ensure they have three copies of data. The original and two backups. Those backups should be stored on two different media and one of those copies should be stored off site. The easiest option to satisfy those requirements is to have a physical copy on a storage device and a backup in the cloud. Since ransomware can encrypt data on network drives and connected storage devices, a local drive should be disconnected after the backup has been made.

Take out some time this World Backup Day to test your backups and review your backup strategies and ensure that you will be able to recover your data if disaster strikes.

Email archiving is essential for most businesses; however, many businesses are not using a cloud-based email archiving solution. In fact, a large number rely on email backups, even though backups are impractical and data loss is a very real concern. But what are the benefits of secure, cloud-based email archiving over backups?

Loss of Email Simply isn’t an Option

Hillary Clinton could easily explain one of the most important benefits of a cloud-based email archiving solution. If an email archive is stored locally, should the device on which that archive is stored be lost or stolen, the entire archive would never be seen again. That is exactly what happened last year.

Donald Trump was quick to citizen Hillary Clinton. Not only was that archive lost, it could potentially have been accessed by an unauthorized individual. Donald Trump is keen not to make a similar mistake. He has reportedly started using a messaging app that deletes all messages once they have been read. Such an app would certainly prevent accidental disclosure, although it would not be an option for many businesses as regulations require emails to be kept for a number of years.

Loss of email is simply not an option in regulated industries. Big fines await companies who do not archive or backup their emails. Emails must be securely stored and made available to auditors or organizations will be in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, FINRA, HIPAA, and the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act to name but a few. If a backup or local email archive is lost, the consequences can be severe.

Take healthcare organizations for example. If a laptop computer is stolen and email backups containing electronic protected health information were on the device, those data could potentially be accessed by an unauthorized individual. That would be a violation of HIPAA Rules. The Office for Civil Rights could easily fine a healthcare organization millions of dollars for such a data breach. If emails are archived and stored in the cloud, such a breach would not occur in the event of device loss or theft.

Emails Must Be Found Quickly for Legal Discovery and GDPR

If a lawsuit is filed against a company, it may be necessary to provide copies of emails as part of legal discovery. While many companies store old emails in backups, searching for emails can be a difficult, expensive and long-winded process. For an average-sized organization searching for emails could take weeks, even though emails need to be found in minutes. With an email archiving solution, archived messages can be searched and retrieved in a matter of seconds or minutes, not weeks.

A similar scenario exists for data access requests under the EU´s General Data Protection Regulation. EU citizens now have the right to request details of any data that could be used to identify them, modify it where necessary, and erase it is there is justifiable cause. Businesses maintaining a database of EU citizens will find compliance with GDPR much easier by implementing cloud-based email archiving, which also has the benefit of complying with the regulations relating to data security.

Secure, Cloud-Based Email Archiving Resolves Storage Headaches

Considering the volume of emails now being sent, and the requirement for those emails to be kept for years in many cases, the space required for storing email is considerable. A recent report from Radicati Group suggests the average employee sends or receives 121 emails a day. For an organization with 500 employees that is 60,500 emails a day. With 22 working days each month, that amounts to 15,972,000 emails a year. Each of those emails may only be a few KB, but over a year the storage space required is substantial. Cloud-based email archiving not only allows millions of emails to be stored, there is no need for organizations to purchase any hardware for storage. All emails are securely stored in the cloud.

The benefits of secure, cloud-based email archiving are clear. So what options are available that provide all of the benefits of cloud-based email archiving in an easy to use, cost effective package? To meet businesses’ email archiving needs, TitanHQ developed ArcTitan – a secure, cloud-based email archiving solution that allows organizations to meet compliance requirements, search email archives quickly, and retrieve messages in minutes. ArcTitan has excellent scalability, and can be used for old email storage by companies with ten to 10,000+ email accounts.

Emails can be archived from anywhere at any time, and messages can be accessed via a mail client or browser. Furthermore, with a pay as you go subscription, cloud-based email archiving is affordable for businesses of all sizes.

To find out more about the benefits of ArcTitan, contact the TitanHQ sales team today!